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After trying to replace Nautilus with Pcman File Manager, I somehow got this black desktop

It’s not possible to right click on the Desktop and changing the background by using System->Preference->Appearance would not help either.

As I learned later from a new Hollandish friend, nautilus failed to start and therefore the Desktop cannot start proberly. Now, I don’t know any better, all I know is as soon as I start nautilus back up using terminal, the Desktop appears like magic.

So the solution was simple Restart Nautilus. In fact, restarting nautilus can solve a lot of problem when something does not display correctly.

I finally gave up on PCman File Manager and decided to stick with nautilus after all.

A few days ago, when I decided that my 5GB partition for Ubuntu is getting a bit too crowded with all kinds of applications, I uninstalled a bunch of software through synaptic. Well, one of them is Evolution. I freed about 1GB of hard drive space. However, disaster stroke, everything disappeared from my desktop. I saw nothing on my desktop, no menus, no icons, no panels and not even my beloved desktop background but a smooth orange background. I freaked out. After several restarts, things did not help at all.

I needed to get online for some help, and the only way to do that was to open Firefox. So I opened terminal -> Ctrl+Shift+T (Thank god for the shortcut, otherwise I’m dead). Typed in firefox, it opened firefox! nice. Now, this guy had a similar problem, and the solution seemed very simple. I posted it here.

Problem

After uninstalling several packages in Synaptic, the desktop just goes blank and there is nothing, not even icons or panels.

Solution

We need to reinstall ubuntu-desktop, this will reinstall all the default packages.

Hold down Ctrl+Alt+F1

Login

Enter

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

After you are done, return to x-server by Alt+F7 or just restart.

Interestingly enough, if you would like to have packages installed in Kbuntu or other distribution, there you can do so with a similar process as above. The only thing different is it would be Kbuntu-desktop (or else) instead of Ubuntu-desktop. Check Synaptic.